Cross words (again)

Oh dear. Sometimes you get the feeling that a big row is unnecessary, that everyone wishes they could wind the clock back or just get out of it. The wearing of crosses in England is one of those matters. For some it is a non-issue, for others it is a matter of simple common sense, for others still it is the thin end of a very dangerous wedge.

Media reporting doesn’t help. Just as a nuanced comment about gay relationships (aspiring to the ‘virtues of marriage’ – got that?) leads to headlines proclaiming that the new Dean of St Paul’s ‘backs campaign for gay marriage’, so another game is set up to create/prove/illustrate (delete as appropriate) division between archbishops. What if there is no contradiction between their positions and this is just ‘story creation’?

The Archbishop of York rightly says that the wearing of jewellery is not a matter for government judgement. If the government wants to get involved in questions of what people wear, then I await with interest their rulings on the abolition of the burqa and the prohibition for Sikhs wearing their kirpan. This argument about someone wearing a small cross has got completely out of proportion: if jewellery is to be banned on a BA uniform, then all jewellery (including BA badges, presumably) should be banned – the ruling being based on the potential dangers in an emergency of loose or sharp jewellery. However, if it is the nature of the jewellery – in this case a cross – then that is a different matter and the argument should be one of principle about religious symbols. That this current argument has gone as far as European courts is ridiculous as it appears to most people to be a matter of simple common sense.

According to the Daily Telegraph the Archbishop of Canterbury said in Rome that “the cross had been stripped of its meaning as part of a tendency to manufacture religion. Taking as his text the account of Jesus driving the money changers from the temple in Jerusalem, he said the temple had become a ‘religion factory’ rather than a place of worship”:

I believe that during Lent one of the things we all have to face is to look at ourselves and ask how far we are involved in the religion factory… And the cross itself has become a religious decoration.

Er… isn’t that true? Is anyone seriously going to argue that the cross has become for vast numbers of people simply a piece of jewellery – a decoration devoid of any religious significance – or a sort of religious totem (or lucky charm) that substitutes for substantive faith or commitment?

The point is that both archbishops are telling the truth about the wearing of crosses. They are simply not engaged in the same argument. (It’s a bit like me saying the sky is blue, my mate saying it is covered in a layer of ozone, and the commentator saying we are bitterly divided.) Any contradiction – and they are both grown-ups, so they can differ if they wish to – is, in this instance spurious. The fact that some people are ‘angered’ by the archbishop’s comments is irrelevant: someone is always angered by whatever an archbishop says and we have all been told by journalists that we are ‘furious’, ‘angry’, ‘upset’ when all we have done is differed from a view. You’d think that all archbishops do is spend their day working out how to upset people by making outrageously sensible statements.

However, I still think it ridiculous that any government – especially a religiously illiterate one – should try to decide on questions about the wearing of a cross on clothing. This simply feeds suspicions of conspiracies against Christians. So far BA has never asked me to remove my pectoral cross when flying – and my pectoral cross is a good deal bigger than any little piece of jewellery.

Related

15 Responses to “Cross words (again)”

Thanks for your common-sense writing on an issue where the media (again) seem interested only in spurious argument. I may not share your faith, but enjoy the blog!

BTW – I think it can be ‘jewellery’ or ‘jewelry’ (at least according to the OED), but not ‘jewellery’ (“In commercial use commonly spelt jewellery; the form jewelry is more rhetorical and poetic, and unassociated with the jeweller. But the pronunciation with three syllables is usual even with the former spelling.” )

As I understand it HMG is involved because individuals who want to wear a cross in circumstances their employers found inappropriate challenged the decisions of UK courts.

If HMG wished to be involved they would change the law: they cannot change the judges or their judgements.

So their minimal action is to defend our courts in European ones.

While I loathe the current government I suspect that they have taken the line which will cause them least disturbance in their quest for re-election.

Wearing an outward sign of the cross is not a sine qua non for any Christian I have known. The financial interests of people selling crosses and “plans” relating to these artefacts have been regarded as of undue importance by some who have made a fuss in the past.

Has the government decided anything? They have just sent their submission/opinion to the court, I thought.

And they are giving their view on two specific cases involving employment law (one where tehy are the ultimate employer – the NHS) rather than what people wear when they are walking down the street – which I think you’re burqha and kirpan allusion is referring to.

Perhaps the rather litigious Christian Legal Centre may have something to do wit the fact that this is going to the ECHR….

Re: Your last point – unless you are intending to start serving meals and giving out duty free I think you’ll be all right there. The BA case is around an employee not a traveler.

Incidentally Bishop Nick, I’d be interested to hear your views on how your criticism of the media sits alongside the fact that two of the main critics of the government on this issue are both former or current columnists on Murdoch Sunday rags. I refer of course to former Archbishop Carey (ex-News of the World) and Archbishop Sentamu (Sun on Sunday).

In the latter case, do you think it is wise for Archbishop Sentamu to embark on a regular column with such an organ? As I am sure you recognise, the problem with being a serving Archbishop and writing a column on a down market tabloid is that (a) you have to fill the space every week and (b) the market demands that one’s writing is always “hard hitting”.

Archbishop Rowan, it seems to me, is the most considered public speaker and knows, it seems, the value of thoughtful silence.

I am worried that Archbishop Sentamu, through his column, will be, to put it bluntly, opening his mouth unnecessarily. The newspaper has trumpeted that Archbishop Sentamu is “joining the team”.

I hope the rumours that he will be a shortlived Murdoch columnist are true.

Well said, Nick. I was more than a little irritated yesterday by the misrepresentation of the Dean’s remarks, especially after hearing him in person on R4, making it clear that ‘there is no such thing as Gay Marriage’. His position on ‘covenants and blessings’ following ‘the virtues of marriage’ is surely not that hard for non-religious journalists to understand, is it? Or do we have to spend time re-educating those whom Richard Dawkins calls the ‘Bibically illiterate’? On crosses, my Baptist pastor Dad used to preach that ‘it was not about a pain-drenched figure’ but about the way that Jesus’ suffering ‘crossed out’ the great big ‘Capital I’. Isn’t it about time the Church stood up for the rights of those who put the rights of their families, their communities, their nations and, yes, their churches, before their own ‘preferences’ and rights? Not that they are mutually exclusive, but all I hear from the atheistic liberal ‘humanist’ lobby is, to quote John Lennon, ‘I, me, mine’. Time to challenge their beliefs? I think we’d find many Christian humanists, socialists and Gay Christians, who’d agree.

mar·riage (mrj)
n.
1.
a. The legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife, and in some jurisdictions, between two persons of the same sex, usually entailing legal obligations of each person to the other.
b. A similar union of more than two people; a polygamous marriage.
c. A union between persons that is recognized by custom or religious tradition as a marriage.
d. A common-law marriage.
e. The state or relationship of two adults who are married: Their marriage has been a happy one.

The state is the relevant authority for (a) above, plenty of room for the sort of ruck the foreign led UK national media like to use to distract from their owner’s interests, usually contrary to those of the rest of us.

I seems, Quietzaple, that your system of defining different jurisdictions applies equally to the question of religious jewellery and that a not inconsiderable part of the problem lies in the inability of religious people to understand the difference between A and C.

It doesn’t surprise me. Until fairly recently the morals of the state reflected the morals of the church and the question of how one can appropriately live ones religious faith in a public sphere never arose.

It’s not an easy one. The case of the B&B owners (who actually run a massive guest house and who are not inviting people into their own breakfast room) highlights the difficulty of defining where private religious belief and its public expression stop.
It’s sad that we need the courts for this but it is also inevitable – we’re all learning here.

But Christian shrill voices and over-reaction don’t help. It’s no good blaming the media when Christians themselves loudly shout about discrimination because their employer would rather they did not wear a chain dangling on a neck when they work in a clinical environment. For someone who has spent a lot of times in hospitals and seen countless of bare necks and of taped up wedding rings, this isn’t exactly a revelation nor is it discrimination.

If we could a be a little more discerning about which cases genuinely require clarification and which are just temper tantrums born out of the undeniable fact that Christianity is no longer as respected in this country as it once was, we’d be doing our own faith a lot of good.

“His position on ‘covenants and blessings’ following ‘the virtues of marriage’ is surely not that hard for non-religious journalists to understand, is it? ”

Actually, it is.
There are a lot of people saying that the opposition to calling gay unions marriage is deeply nuanced and complex. But I have yet to hear a single complex and nuanced argument that goes beyond “marriage is between a man and a woman and has always been so and therefore marriage is between a man and a woman”.
Marriage has shown an extraordinary elasticity over the years, slowly embracing interracial couples, couples from different denominations, of different faith, divorced couples…

The public perception is that it really isn’t a big deal to change it from something between “a man and a woman” to “two people”. And most gay civil partnered couples already speak of themselves as being married and refer to their partners as husband or wife. I can’t count the number of times friends and acquaintantes have asked me in conversation “and how is your lovely wife”?, yet I have never once been asked “and how is your lovely civil partner?” It just doesn’t enter into people’s minds.

For non-religous journalists steeped in the civil debate and living a normal life in society, the question is “marriage or no marriage”, it is not a convoluted “let’s find a way of blessing the civil partnerships we have strenuously opposed only 7 years ago but in such a way that we are seen to affirm the virtues of marriage – but making very clear that we are, of course, not talking about marriage”.

Any religious person wading into this debate at a time when it is really about a civil government extending civil marriage to couples marriage has previously not been open to, and who then talks of supporting the “virtues of marriage” must be prepared for being seen as someone who actually supports gay marriage.

If we really want a different debate, let’s all stop meddling with civil law for a while, wait until the dust settles and then have an internal church conversation about it.

I agree with Erica Baker’s last paragraph – just because I disagree with something doesn’t mean it should be illegal. Many Christians believe divorced people should not re-marry, but that doesn’t mean it should be illegal for any divorcees to marry in a registry office.
Lots of things are wrong, but not illegal, eg having an affair.

I think that there’s much discussion over what marriage means. If it is no more than a legal recognition of a contractual union with certain legal rights and inheritance rights then perhaps gay marriage is ok.. but then civil partnerships already offer this, so what is the need for gay marriage?

If, as I believe, marriage is more than this, but a total commitment to love honour and obey, forsaking all others and becoming one flesh in the eyes of God and for the procreation of children, then gay marriage becomes rather difficult to even imagine.

I thought civil partnerships, though not something I’m that keen on, were a great example of the famous British compromise.. It’s a shame this we are told to be ashamed of this most diplomatic art that allows us to live in peace and in consensus without the view of one being foisted upon the beliefs of another.. oh for an age where tolerance and understanding are once again heralded above such impossibles as total equality, whatever that might even mean.

Gay couples are gay couples.. I have got over this.. this doesn’t make a marriage of two people of the same sex possible.